Old Time is Still AFlying
by PropernameSurname
Summary: I told him it WAS amazing, that it was really fantastic. I told him how glad I was he’d told ME, and I told him what a great thing it was, to know where the ducks go. Holden at 50, looking back. T for language.


A/N: I spent so much time on this for a school assignment (and on that note, _goodness_ but there are a lot of school assignments related to The Catcher in the Rye out there!) that I decided to share it, in case anybody cared to read. For me, it served as an unexpected way to come to terms with the character of Holden and the story in general. I can certainly sympathize with Holden's fear of change, and I'd like to think that he has it within him to conquer his weaknesses and succeed in life. He may be an idiotic jerk at times, but he's intelligent and insightful, at least. At any rate, I hope you enjoy!

_*Side Note: The title of this story comes from a quote by Robert Herrick. It is used entirely out of the context of his poem, but I thought the line fitting on its own terms._

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IF YOU WANT to know the truth, I'm really not in the mood to tell you all the details of my life after I got out of that lousy place in California. The last time I told people about a lot of stuff, I only had 17 years worth of autobiography to write, and I didn't want to go into it even then. Now I'm damn near 50 years old, and I _really_ don't want to start telling about everything _now._ For one thing, it takes too goddamn much time. Boy, I really hate when someone takes too long to tell something. When they start out telling you, you're listening all attentively and crap, but if they drag it out then you lose your concentration and start thinking about how maybe their hair kind of looks like they put cream cheese in it to keep it in place or something, and you don't hear what they're telling you about at all. It's better if people just cut to the chase, but they never do. It seems like all I meet anymore are people who just wander all over the goddamn place when they're trying to tell you something. To tell you the truth, it drives me crazy. I just want to yell at them to get to the goddamn point already! But they never do. They just keep taking forever, or repeating themselves like crazy. That's something else I hate, when people repeat themselves.

Another thing, I think people who write autobiographies are phonies. I mean, who would want to write a whole goddamn book about them_selves?_ Nobody would. Not if they're humble, and all, and honest. You have to be a conceited jerk to write an autobiography, or at least _most_ of the time you do. There are a few exceptions. My brother D.B., _he_ wrote an autobiography a few years back. I liked it. Or, I liked some of it. I didn't read it all, actually. He wrote a lot about the years he spent writing goddamn _mov_ies and all in Hollywood. I always thought it was stupid of him to go out there anyways, and to tell you the truth, I don't really _want_ to know what he did there, besides becoming a prostitute and selling his soul or whatever. But, in his autobiography, he also wrote a little about before all that crap, about Allie and Phoebe and us when we were kids. I read that. Actually, I liked it a lot, what I read of it. He wrote about Phoebe loving carousels and all, and how old Allie was mad for poems and had that mitt with all the green writing on it, and how we'd go to the park on Sundays. He wrote about when Allie died, too, but to be honest I sort of skipped over that part. It didn't much interest me. I was there, anyway. I still remember it well enough.

But what I was saying, about how I don't want to tell you my whole goddamn life's story. I'm just not in the mood for it. You have to be in the mood for that kind of stuff. But I guess there are some things that are worth telling about, if you're really interested. Although you probably shouldn't be.

I guess I should start by telling you what I did for a job my entire life. Well, what I did for a job _most_ of my life. For a little while at one point I was a caddy for this crumby golfer who thought he was about a million times better than he actually was, and who always wore these maroon-colored golf shirts with the buttons buttoned all the way up to his goddamn chin. He was a lousier golfer than my wife Jane was a tennis player, and that's saying something. It really is. But that didn't last too long, which is why I thought I'd tell you about my _other_ job.

I sort of decided on that job for lack of anything better to do, and because I don't have any special talents and crap, besides lying. See, when I got back to school after I was all rested up in California, what I did was, I started thinking about how the only subject I ever passed was English. I mean, I'm really quite good at writing compositions, and I do enjoy reading and all. So what I got to thinking when I got back was, if I couldn't be a catcher in the rye or anything-there weren't too many ads for that in the papers, to tell you the truth-maybe I could be something to do with books and kids and stuff.

How I _decided_ on my job, though, was kind of embarrassing at the time, actually. I made the mistake of telling the school counselor what I was thinking about. He'd been trying to get me to make a "plan for the future," so I wouldn't just become some homeless guy on the streets with moth-holey mittens or whatever. So he asked me that day whether I had a plan yet, and I told him that yes, I did have one. But he didn't believe me. No one ever believes you about anything like that. For instance, if my mom would ask me how I was doing when she saw me, and I said I was 'fine', she'd never believe me. She'd always tell me to say how I was _really_ feeling, and so I'd tell her that, really, I was 'fine'! But that would make her get all touchy, and then it would be difficult to feel 'fine' anyway. People are always doing that, making it so you can't just feel 'fine' if you want to.

But that old counselor. He didn't believe me when I told him that I _did_ have a plan, so I figured I'd have to tell him what I was thinking about so he'd get off my back and all, for a little while. You'd think I would have learned my lesson about telling people things. When I told him, see, about English being my only good subject, and about the kids and books and all that goddamn crap, he got really excited. He said it was "real progress," whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. But then he told me something else. He said he thought maybe I should be a _children's librarian_ or something! Boy, when he said that, it damn near killed me! But he was serious as hell. He really was. For a while I thought he'd been in some sort of accident or something and gotten his brains all screwed up. But when I actually started to think about it, I realized maybe he wasn't completely crazy after all. The weirdest thing was, I kind of started thinking that maybe I'd really _like_ being a children's librarian. It was sort of the next best thing to catcher in the rye. If you know what I mean.

I never would have done it for real, though, if it hadn't been for Jane Gallagher. I had called her when I was taking a break in California, and we got to be quite chummy again, actually. We really did. She visited me once there, before I left, and we just _talked_ for a very long time. Most people are too goddamn phony to have a whole _conversation _and all with, but old Jane knocked me out as much as ever. We wrote to each other and called each other up a lot, senior year, and she's the one who convinced me that I should give the whole crazy librarian thing a try. So I did. I went to this little college in New York, and studied literature and everything. I kind of liked it, if you want to know the truth. I was old enough that I thought I was sort of interested in it. I really was. Funny enough, Jane went to the same college I did. She wanted to be a P.E. teacher, because she was so fond of athletic sports and all. I'm still not sure whether our going to the same school was a coincidence or not, but when I mentioned it to Jane once, a long time ago, she just sort of changed the subject and wouldn't say anything about it. Boy, that Jane. She's not as touchy as most people, so won't mind if I tell you about how she accidentally ruined my plans to propose to her. You already know how the goddamn movies spoiled me when I was younger, and I had all these things I was going to do, and say, to get it perfect, like that Blanchard guy would have. Boy, I practiced that proposal like it was the lead in some crummy stage production. Everything was right. We were going out to dinner, see, and I was going to have the waiter put it in a glass of champagne and bring it out to her, and all, (kind of corny, I know, and not the most original idea ever, but I thought old Jane would get a bang out of it anyway) and she'd be really surprised and trip all over everything she tried to say, see, but I would be all suave and collected, and we'd end up skipping out on the bill and flying to Las Vegas to get married. Something like that. But what really happened was, I made the mistake of wearing this old bomber jacket that I got a bang out of but that was sort of worn-out, and had a hole in the left pocket. Being the genius that I am, I put the box with her ring in _that goddamn pocket!_ I don't know what I was thinking, to tell you the truth. I really don't. But anyways, when we were going into the restaurant, the box dropped out of my pocket. Jane saw it before I did, and picked it up to see what it was. Of course she was curious and all. Boy, when she saw that ring it damn near killed her! I should have been happy that _part_ of my plan was right, because she started blushing and tripping all over herself and her mouth going about fifty different ways, like I loved, but the problem was that _I_ got so embarrassed I'd screwed up something so important I wasn't suave or collected or anything. She didn't care, though. She said 'yes' anyhow. We didn't get married in Las Vegas.

But anyways, it's mostly because of Jane that I became a librarian. I know a lot of people who knew me back when I was a kid wouldn't believe I was a librarian even if you dragged them to where I work and made them watch me for a few days, but it sort of fits me right, being one. Like old Allie's baseball mitt used to fit him.

Since you probably know all about what librarians do (you should, anyways), I won't tell you all about my exciting adventures carting around books and flipping through file cabinets with the goddamn Dewey decimal system and all. I do want to tell about this one thing, though. It happened when I was still pretty new to being a librarian. I mean, I knew how to put books away and all, but I still wasn't sure yet whether I'd made the right career choice, if you know what I mean. After the thing I want to tell you about, I knew I had made the right choice.

There was this boy, see, who came to the library I worked at every Thursday. He had really light hair that reminded me of that fuzz baby ducks and chickens have all over them, and he was about the palest thing you ever saw. He was sort of sick all the time, too. But I liked him. I really did. He would always check out about thirty-five books, a bunch of them extremely boring ones, and he would sit down at a table in the corner of the reading room and pretend like he was some really smart old guy who read about everything until his mom came and picked him up. Honest to God. He would sort of puff up his chest and flip through the pages, fast enough so you could tell he wasn't actually reading the words. But he would stop whenever he got to a picture, and look at it for a while, and kind of stroke his chin like he was deep in some profound thought. Boy, he got a bang out of that. It killed me. But even though you could tell he got a bang out of it, I never saw him smile. Not even once. He coughed a lot, but he never smiled.

Then this one afternoon. I was putting away some books in the reference section, when he came racing up to me like a robber was chasing him with a machete, or something, and started tugging at my sleeve like he thought I was deaf or blind and the only way I'd know he was there was if he pulled at my sleeve hard enough. I asked him what was the matter.

"The _ducks!_" He sort of shouted. He was a little out of breath, actually, from all that running.

"What about the ducks?" I asked him.

"I know where they _go_ in the winter!" He practically tore my arm off, he was so excited. "My mommy told me last night! She says they fly away to really warm places! Like _Flor_ida_! _Isn't that _amazing?_"

He was staring up at me with the kind of wonder that only kids can manage to have, and I noticed for the first time how blue and _clear_ his eyes were. And I found myself as excited as he was, all of a sudden. I told him it _was_ amazing, that it was really fantastic. I told him how glad I was he'd told _me_, and I told him what a great thing it was, to know where the ducks go. Another thing about it, I wasn't being phony at all. I know it sounds like I might have been, but I wasn't at all. I really wasn't. That was just about the most important thing anybody had said to me in a long time. And you could tell the boy knew I was really excited, too, because he gave me the hugest grin I've ever seen before he ran off the meet his mom. If there had been a power outage, or something, he could have made enough light for everyone to still be able to read in that goddamn library just with his smile. It made him look so _diff_erent. Not pale or sick or anything, but _happy_, like he was just the happiest goddamn kid on the whole goddamn planet. I stood in the reference section for a while after he left. I don't really remember what all I was thinking about. But I guess it probably had to do with ducks.

I heard about two weeks later that the boy had passed away. They told me that he had a crummy immune system, and that he got really sick with pneumonia or something and just got too worn out. I wasn't really sure how to feel when I heard that. On the one hand, I knew I'd miss him like crazy, not being able to see him puff out his chest and stroke his chin and all anymore. To tell you the truth, I was really upset about that. But on the other hand, I figured he must have gotten to heaven and all, a kid like him, and he'd be able to read all the books he wanted without coughing all the time. And maybe he'd really be a genius-y guy in heaven (though I thought he was pretty darn smart on earth, too). And I knew he'd be okay, that maybe he would be friends with Allie, if they ever met. I wasn't too sure if you _could_ meet people in heaven, and all, but I knew he and Allie would get a bang out of each other, if they ever did meet. I bet the first thing he did when he got to heaven was go find a bunch of ducks and sit around and read with them. I liked thinking about that. I really did. It's funny how life works.

Well, that's really all I wanted to tell you about. I could tell you about all the other stuff I did at that old library, or how Jane and I have three okay kids that she dresses really nice and all, or how we have this Doberman Pinscher that always pees on our neighbor's lawn, but I'm not exactly in the mood. You have to be in the mood for that kind of stuff.

I will tell you about one more thing, though, about that old carousel in Central Park that Phoebe used to love to ride when she was a kid (she's not a kid anymore, but she still kills me, old Phoebe). They tore it down a few years ago, and put up some kind of statue. But they kept the benches where the parents and all would sit to watch their kids go around and around on their horses. Sometimes I still go there, when I'm really tired or just sort of in the mood to, and I sit on a bench and pretend like I can still hear the music that the old carousel used to play. And sometimes it makes me think about a big old field of rye, and kids running through it. And I think about that boy who got so excited about the ducks coming along through the rye, his hair all golden like it and his eyes as clear and blue as the sky. He grins at me, when I picture it, and I don't catch him or anything like I used to think about. But I don't need to, because there's no cliff to fall off of, so he doesn't fall. He just smiles, and runs through the rye like he's flying. Sometimes I think he actually _does_ fly, if you want to know the truth. And it makes me feel _so damn happy_.


End file.
